Palestinian rescue workers search for bodies among the houses flooded after an earthen embankment’s collapse sent a wall of sewage crashing into the Gaza Strip village of Umm Naser. Northern Gaza’s treatment plant, just a few hundred yards from the border with Israel, had been putting overflow sewage in the nearby dunes, creating a lake covering nearly 110 acres.

Rescue crews and Hamas gunmen rushed to the area to search for people feared buried under the sewage and mud. Dressed in wetsuits, they paddled boats through the layer of foam floating on the green and brown rivers of waste. Others waded up to their hips into the sewage.

The noxious smell of waste and dead animals hung in the air. In one house, everything from the television to the sink was covered in muck.

“We lost everything. Everything was covered by the flood. It’s a disaster,” said Amina Afif, 65, whose shack was destroyed.

Aid officials said plans to build a larger waste treatment facility had been held up for years by perpetual fighting in the area.

The existing treatment plant in northern Gaza – located just a few hundred yards from the border with Israel – stores waste in seven holding basins.

With the burgeoning population producing nearly four times as much waste as the plant could treat, officials have put overflow sewage in the nearby dunes, creating a lake covering nearly 110 acres, the U.N. said. On Tuesday morning, an earth embankment around one of the seven basins collapsed, sending a wall of sewage crashing into the neighboring village of Umm Naser.

The wave killed two women in their 70s, two toddlers and a teenage girl and injured 35 other people, officials said. More than 200 homes were destroyed.

The Gaza City mayor blamed the collapse on local people digging out dirt from the structure and selling it to building contractors.

As news of the deadly mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, unfolded last week, Pia Guerra, a 46-year-old Vancouver-based artist, felt helpless. She couldn’t bring herself to go to sleep, so she began to draw.

Police who find suspected drugs during a traffic stop or an arrest usually pause to perform a simple task: They place some of the material in a vial filled with liquid. If the liquid turns a certain color, it’s supposed to confirm the presence of cocaine, heroin or other narcotics.